


Right Side of the Moon

by TooManyHexCodes



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 11:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyHexCodes/pseuds/TooManyHexCodes
Summary: lil thing to settle the whole in my heart, picks up after the final anime episode





	Right Side of the Moon

Death comes and goes like receding tides of the sea. Some people see it only once in their life, while I've seen the scene too many times to count. The waves crashed and struggled with the sand before eventually retreating with the shells and small creatures tucked away in it’s white grasp. Water could climb miles high, taking down towns, sweeping up children who were playing ball in the street, or it only ticked the ankles of those who ultimately survive. The stronger the crash, the easier it was to slip away into the deep blue bleeding to black. Today, it was gentle. Water slid down the tile of the library and followed into the emergency room, but it never came close to me. It was a bystander, an option I would have to choose as it would not choose for me.

It’s easy to accept a tide that sweeps you off your feet, motivating you to fight for your life when only the hardest struggles guaranteed an escape. The smallest waves are the hardest to die to, but here I am. 

Water gently pooled around the nurse’s feet as I was brought down from ambulance into a sterile room. She didn’t see it. It traced the path of the cart I was rolled on, and as the doctor stepped on it, there was no splash. In the reflection of the water, I saw Skipper with two bullet holes eating away at his body. It was hard to not throw myself in, to hug him, to say sorry. With a knowing look, the water was disturbed and next was Shorter. He was looking away from me, slumped down with dead eyes. He looked at me more through the hole in this heart. A chill manifested in my calloused, right hand. The feeling seeped slowly up into my elbow, but vanished. There was a brief period of nothing, in myself and the water, but it slowly reddened as if the sun was meeting the horizon. It deepened to the color of blood as it rose to the height on the operating table i lied on, liquid swirling around in an endless spiral. It was Griff. First it was his dead eyes that formed, then his smile. i felt tears form and my chest contract. His shoulders were low and his palms rested on his knees comfortably. He had left me, but now could rest peacefully. 

The water started to steam and swept it’s way closer to where I lie to taunt me until it boiled above me with heat caressing my fingertips. I reared back anticipating the pain, but it was absent. It felt like sitting next to a fireplace with the warmth of blankets from the dryer- no, the warmth of another living thing. Eiji was here, next to me. The water now reached the middle of my cheeks. I couldn't move my hands to feel him, my face to see him, but he is beside me. That is when I let go. I was flying towards the open sea.

Everything changed into a dark shade of blue as I felt submersed in water. I could sit up now, but my body was replaced by a light blue aura outlined in a ghostly white. Not the body I move with, but the duplicate lying on the operating table. My own hands looked and felt like normal skin. The sound of my heart rate monitor was distorted as if through liquid and far away. The doctors and nurses scrambled for the defibrillator and I felt a twinge in my chest, but I turned away and never looked back. I walked to the door, well through it, and into the streets. I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t matter.

Outside I was in an Atlantis in the shape of New York. It was beautiful how the massive buildings were submerged. People like me, in full color without a ghostly aura, swam through the skies on their individual paths as if fish. I was lost unlike them and could only stand beside the streets. Everyone on eye level with me was discolored, they couldn’t see me. I poked my hand out into the road, but no driver noticed. As they continued driving by, my hand slipped through the frame of their car and grazed their face. I felt nothing. Next, I stuck my whole arm in traffic and looked away. I still felt nothing. I took one step into the traffic with my eyes closed. I peeked and saw ghastly cars race towards me. Panic bubbled in my chest as my fingertips dug deep into my palms, but I felt nothing. The panic subsided with a brief euphoria every time a new car came close. I was untouchable.

This new world, which mimicked the I lived in for eighteen years, was old but so new. The tall buildings were familiar, but that was the extent. I didn't know what to do, so I lied in the middle of the intersection. Wheels would come and I’d flinch at first, but they never collided. The hazy clouds passed on until it was night. The light of the streetlamps and buildings paled enough to see the stars in their full glory. Colors of the night filled the sky in brilliant blues and sparkling stars. Everything was serene as the sky moved its mass gently as if blown in a summer breeze. Hours turned to minutes as the full moon grew like a sapling to a stem until at its peak it bloomed into a brilliant sphere brighter than any star. It’s moonbeams traveled through the distorted aqua-sky into my eyes. My body soured up through the traffic into the sky making my chest light and my vision blurry, until I could make out a small silhouette.

The moon gave me a gift in the shape of a man. He looked as real as me, tears fell down the face hidden in the moonlight as he collapsed on his legs, remaining suspended high up above the ground with me. His hands grasped for mine as I dove to grab him. I never once wanted to hear his sobs. Was he a hallucination sent to torture me or give me solace for what’s to come? I had caused him to mourn, the one person I cared for enough to keep him out of my danger was now mourning because of me. He promised for his soul to be forever by my side, but now it is only causing him pain. I felt this vision could leave me at any moment, but I couldn’t look into his eyes.

His grasp on my back was shaky as we drifted slowly into the traffic below and the dear came back. What if he got hit by cars? I am dead, but can his soul die here? I frantically tried to swim, trying to climb even an inch upwards, while never letting go of Eiji’s side. I struggled with no avail and as we were about to hit the pavement, I held my breath. And we floated. The lighter my chest, the higher we soared together. We flew until above the skyscrapers clustered with fish, breached the thick clouds, until only the moon coupled with dazzling star was in our sight.

Only then did I look towards him. His head eclipsed the light, but I could make out the new scar dragging from his forehead through his right eye and into his cheek. He was dead like me.

“What happened?” My voice cracked. Tears came only from the left as his scrunched up face let out all he must of kept in before. “Who did this? Eiji I-”

“I thought I could have killed you.” His whisper was so distraught and tinged with hopelessness, I stopped. We dropped through the endless sky. My limbs were filled with cement as tears flew off his cheek and left a trail behind us. He yelled hard and loud and with so much emotion and a raw voice. “Do you know how it feels, Ash? I loved you so much I wanted you by my side. The pain of knowing that it was better than you weren't with me killed me when the plane fell! Do you know how scary it is for the oxygen masks to fall? I was so selfish, I wanted you there by my side because I felt you could protect me! I wanted you with me when I died, I was so selfish!”

“Eiji-”

“And here I am floating in a void until I see the skyline, and I feel a heart beat in me again. Then I see that you’re in intensive care. You were hospitalized and I couldn't be there- I was the cause of it! If I knew it was better for us to be apart you would be alive right now! Even if you weren’t-” His voice fell to a whisper as we floated down into the traffic. He wiped his eye with the blackened sleeve covering his right hand. “I just need you, Ash.”

His hand dug into my back with his head in my chest as we now lied floating in all directions as if in zero gravity. His hiccups and sobs quieted down as I embraced him back. I should have been there with him. I should have sat beside him as he fell. I should have grasped on to him for both of our lives so he wouldn’t have to go through everything I feared he would alone. I was the one selfish to push him away to not see him hurt.

After a minute of being quiet, he looked up towards me. The one I swore to protect with a scar forever on his face because of me. Tears of my own fell down and followed the same path stained on his cheek. He pulled me closer as if the two of us could produce one heart beat. His body heat warmed my chest and our feet tangled together.

Slowly, we fell upwards past the clouds again.


End file.
